


Dusk Duty

by Loriela



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: D&D Lore Rework, Homebrew troll lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29924475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loriela/pseuds/Loriela
Summary: A young troll is tasked with guard duty on a long and boring night, and begins to wonder if she's really making a difference there(Part of my attempts to rework D&D Trolls to be less... uncomfortable)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Dusk Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Winner of my fic raffle for February. Check out my blog if you'd like to know how to join the next raffles and polls

Dusk duty. Kallem hated dusk duty. Just when the whole town was waking up and starting their nights, she was expected to already be up and by herself watching the north gate.

At first she assumed this watch was gonna be the easiest. It was late enough that she didn’t have to wear a protective veil to see anything through the glare of the sun, but it was also early enough that she could spend most of the night with her friends once her shift was over.

In reality she just ended up with sore eyes, and got too tired to actually enjoy herself later.

The worst part was the gnawing feeling that this would be all her life would ever amount to. That she would die in some boring way, having done nothing of her life besides watch these same fields every night. That she would leave nothing to her descendants, or her village, besides her ashes, even her name lost to time.

At least she got to distract herself watching the merchants come in and start setting up shop. It was mostly trolls, ogres, and giants from neighboring towns and villages, but every once in a while she would catch some small folk walking by, they usually looked tired from a long day of travel, braced for an even longer night of haggling. She wondered what their sleep schedule must look like if they were really planning on staying for the night.

Soon the merchants had all gone through the gate and set up in the market square, and she was left alone with her thoughts once more. Just several more hours and she would be free to go, several more hours that amounted to nothing.

The moon seemed to be the only thing of any interest tonight. It was full and bright and no cloud dared to hide it, its pale light illuminating the fields for miles and miles. In this lighting her trained eyes could see further than even her bow could reach. Funny, she thought, a day half as bright would burn her eyes, but under the moon and stars she could see just fine.

“A beautiful night, isn’t it?” A voice asked behind her. The surprise was enough to make her jump, the ground shaking with her landing.

“Kol’s ass cheeks,” she cursed, “don’t sneak behind me like that!”

“You’re on guard duty, are you not?” The old bard, Leida, asked, “shouldn’t you be paying more attention?”

Leida was an older woman, her appearance somewhat fragile by her people’s standards - she was only 8ft tall after all - but she still had the energy of a troll half her age. She was a storyteller, and one of the few people who remembered the older stories of this town. She was also a complete pest and had a gift for bothering everyone.

“I was paying attention to the road!” Kallem replied in exasperation, “no one's gonna invade us from behind me.”

“So you were off in your own world, thinking about something.” She replied, not caring in the slightest for what was said out loud, “what got you like that this time, dear?”

Kallem looked more than a little annoyed at the implication that she did that with any sort of frequency, but Leida was unfortunately right this time. With a huff, she sat down on the ground and stared off into the night.

“You ever just feel like everything you do amounts to nothing?” She eventually replied.

“We all do, dear...” She answered, without thinking much, “no matter what we do, we all feel like we have done nothing”

“Really supportive there, grandma...”

“But we're all wrong,” Kallem did not seem to buy it, so she continued, “say, have I ever told you the story about why the moon is full of holes?”

“Yes, grandma...” She sighed.

Leida looked at her expectantly, so after a loud groan she continued, “Vaprak tried to convince the giant gods to take them and their family in, but the giants didn’t like them for some reason and didn’t want them to see their king, so they punted them so hard they hit the moon.”

Grandma nodded along, a proud smile on her face.

“Then Vaprak came back the next night, and they punted them again,” she continued, “they kept doing it over and over for a week, until the moon goddess herself was so done with her house getting shaken up every night, that she accompanied Vaprak to the halls of the king and demanded to see him.”

There was a long bit of dialog there, but she couldn’t really remember the details, “so the king is astounded by their sturdiness, he accepts them and their daughters as half giants and punishes all the demigods who took part in the punting. Also I think the moon goddess blesses them at the end and--Wait! Is that why we can see so much better at night?”

It surprised even herself just how much of that story she still remembered. Perhaps she listened to it a few times too many.

“So?” Leida asked, an expectant look on her face.

“So what?” She replied in annoyance, “I’m not some demigod who can get punted around like that! I can’t do this kind of stuff.”

“Oh but you can, dear,” Grandma insisted, “there’s no fire between here and the moon. Even a child could survive that.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that we don’t retell this story every generation because of how ‘sturdy’ old Vaprak was. I’d say they weren’t half as sturdy as you are, dear.” She answered, “we do it, because they persevered. Even after so many nights of gaining nothing but pain, they persevered, they kept trying, and that’s what made the gods notice them, and notice us.”

“But I’m not doing some big act of heroism to save all troll kind!” She shouted as she got up again, “I’m doing nothing. Every night all I do is just nothing.”

Leida shook her head, “that’s where you’re wrong again, dear. It’s not the magnitude of the deed that matters, but that you continue to do it. You don’t need to save all troll kind, or slay some mighty beast, or build a town from scratch, or anything of the sorts. Do the good you can do, whenever you can do it, and it will make a difference by the end.”

“No one sings of the dutiful guard.” She argued back, “am I just supposed to accept that I’ll be forgotten? That no one will pray for the soul of old Kallem?”

“Dear, just because you didn’t listen to them, doesn’t mean those stories weren’t there.” She nagged, “you never paid attention to the stories that didn’t involve at least three deaths and a dragon.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Well you wouldn’t be having a life crisis at such a young age if you had listened,” she chided.

Kallem composed herself again, took her post once more and declared, “you better make my story a really good one, okay?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this mess and want more quality content go check out [shera-dnd.tumblr.com](https://shera-dnd.tumblr.com/)


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